The engines of the motor boat slowed, gave a final chug, and stopped.
“Brading Harbor,” remarked our boy guide laconically, as he threw the
anchor, and stepped to the stern to pull in the skiff that trailed
after us. Before us lay the estuary of the Yar, its black water
scarcely differentiated in color from the dark shores that rose above
it. A huddle of buildings lifting on our left changed from blots of
blackness into shadowy outlines, sprinkled here and there with light,
as we rowed in. The lad pulled steadily, with but an occasional glance
at the shore. The steady strokes of the oar slowed down, the blackness
ahead seemed to rush towards us more swiftly, and the boat ran silently
up on to the sand. I jumped out, the little anchor in my hand. We were
at Brading Harbor.
Without a word, the boy pulled up the boat, dug the flukes of the
anchor deep into the sand, and started off into the darkness.
“Come on, Tom,” I said laughing. “This is an Arabian Night Expedition
headed by one of the mutes of Haroun Al Raschid. Hustle up, or we’ll
be left behind.” About three hundred yards from our landing-place our
guide suddenly disappeared; we came abruptly on the corner of a small
brick building, and rounded it to find him working on the padlock of a
broad, low door.
“Bee’s here,” remarked the boy, flinging the door open as we came up.
We stepped just inside and paused. The scratch of a fusee, the clatter
of a lifted lantern, and the low room sprung into light.
A weird sight met our eyes. On a shelf three great diving helmets, with
shining cyclopean eyes of heavy glass, reflected back the lantern’s
flame, and showed barred side windows looking like caged ear-muffs. On
the shelf below three pair of huge shoes, with leaden soles, seemed
ready for some giant’s foot, rather than for the use of man. As the
light shifted, the armor on the wall came into view; copper breastplate
and twilled overalls, hosepipe and coils of safety line; a veritable
museum of diving paraphernalia.
Tom turned to the boy. “You’ll have to show us very carefully how to
run the safety line and the air pump, while you’re down.”
“I don’t go down,” said the boy. “Heart’s wike loike. Niver go down.”
Tom and I stared at each other in consternation. With one accord we
turned to the boy again.
“Who is going down?” I cried.
“Ayther of you thot loikes,” responded the boy calmly.
“I’ll be the one to go, Tom,” I cried, “I’ve got to see it with my own
eyes to write it up properly.”
“Why can’t we both go?” exclaimed Tom eagerly. “I don’t want to be out
of this.”
The boy broke in. “Needs two men oop on rope and poomp.”
“Oh pshaw!” said Tom disgustedly, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t be in
this. I tell you what we’ll do,” he went on, his face brightening, “you
go down first, and then come up, and I’ll go down after you.”
“All right,” I said. “It’s a go.”
The boy had stood motionless while our discussion had gone on.
“How’ll you get the stuff down?” I asked.
“Tike it on a barrow,” he replied briefly, turning to bring a big
wheelbarrow forward.
“Tike they two,” he said, pointing to the two helmets on the right and
the shoes below them. Tom and the lad took a helmet, and placed it on
the barrow. I took a pair of shoes, and nearly dropped them. “Great
Scott,” I ejaculated, “they weigh a ton.”
“Twinty pund,” corrected the lad, without a smile. “You’ll need it on
bottom.”
We loaded till the boy said “stop,” then took our burden to the skiff,
carried it out to the boat, returned for a second load, shipped that,
locked the door, and came down to the shore through the still night. We
had neither seen nor heard any one during our visit.
As we started out of Brading Harbor, Tom remarked, “I’ll take the
wheel, boy, I’ve got the course. Get the armor on Mr. Orrington.”
Never did I experience such a strange toilet. The dress of tan twill,
interlined with sheet rubber, and the copper breastplate were clumsy
and awkward enough. The shoes, twenty pounds to each foot, were no
winged sandals of Mercury, but the huge helmet was worst of all. I
seemed to be prisoned in a narrow cell and, despite myself, I could not
wholly keep from wondering what would happen, if the air pipe should
break, or the rope snap. The big lens, the bull’s-eye that was the
window of the front of the helmet, was left open till I went down, and
I took in the salt air in huge breaths through the orifice, expanding
my chest to its full capacity, while the lad silently plied his wrench
on the nuts that clamped the helmet water-tight. At length the suit was
adjusted, and the safety line tied securely round my waist. Then the
boy spoke.
“Up one, down two. That’s all ye need.” He jerked the rope in my hand
once, twice, and then started forward to take the wheel. We had been
racing swiftly across, towards the lights of Portsmouth, as I made
my diving toilet, but my thoughts, far swifter, had gone thousands
of miles more. Suppose I never came up? If I did not, would Dorothy
ever know? Had I made a mistake in not speaking before? Unavailing
regret tore at me. Yet stronger than any regret or any weakness was my
determination to fulfil my mission. Here was the next step. I must see
what lay below the waves. As I sat there, in my cumbrous raiment, I
tried to analyze my sensations. No danger I had heretofore encountered
had ever caused me anything but a pleasing excitement. Why should this
have a disquieting effect upon me, when Tom was so eager to go. The
answer came like a flash, in Lord Bacon’s words, “He that hath wife and
children, hath given hostages to fortune.” I had neither as yet, but my
whole heart was set on having them. My feeling was not cowardly fear.
Rather, it was instinctive regret at taking the chance of going and
leaving Dorothy behind. I breathed easier when I had worked that out,
and gradually, as my mind quieted, the uneasiness gave away to a sense
of eager expectation. The shore lights were growing brighter, and Tom,
leaving his place at the bow, came down the boat towards my seat in the
stern.
“We’re almost there, old man,” he remarked jubilantly. “The lad has
the bearings. He’ll put us over the exact spot, and then you can go
overboard. It’s a chance of a lifetime.”
Just as he spoke, the lad turned. “Bee’s there,” he said, as he stopped
the motor and threw out an anchor. The great coil of rope ran swiftly
down for a considerable distance, and brought the boat up with a jerk.
The boy came back towards us.
“Screw up t’ bull’s-eye now an’ start t’ poomp,” he directed.
“Good luck, old man,” said Tom, wringing my hand, as he started up the
air pump.
“Same to you. I go with leaden steps,” I remarked, waving my lead-soled
shoe as I spoke.
Tom’s hearty laugh was the last thing I heard. The bull’s-eye shut,
and I found myself breathing fast. To my surprise the air supply was
ample, no trace of taint,--good, wholesome air. “Come,” I said to
myself. “This is not half bad.” Aided by the boy, I clambered clumsily
over the bow and went down the little ladder. As I entered the water,
the weight of my suit went from me, I was borne up as if I were in
swimming, but, as I sank slowly, I began to feel a strange earache,
increasing in intensity till I thought I should cry out with the agony.
My forehead above my eyes seemed clamped in a circlet of red hot
iron, and the bells of a thousand church spires seemed ringing and
reverberating through my head. I could see dimly the black water about
me, and I gripped the metal case of the electric lamp that I held in my
hand, till I feared it would crush into fragments. All of a sudden I
touched bottom, and the pain ceased. The relief was so great that for
a moment or two I stood motionless, luxuriating in the respite and, as
I started to go on, I realized that a slight depression was the only
unusual bodily feeling left. I turned the switch of my lamp and looked
about me. Nothing but clean, white sand, nothing to show which way I
should turn. “Straight ahead is the best course,” I decided, and I
started forward, my boots and dress, heavy and dragging on the surface
as they were, of but the slightest inconvenience here. Fortunately for
me, the tide was no serious hindrance, and I was to windward of the
boat. Before moving I turned my lantern in every direction. One thing
was sure. There was no huge hulking shadow, such as a warship lying on
the bottom would make. My lamp but dimly outlined the lane of light on
the sand along which I started forward. Now that I was about my work,
and had safely reached the bottom, the strangeness of the situation
began to wear off. I went ahead twenty measured steps, casting my light
in every direction. No result. I paced back the same number to keep
my position even. Turned to the right, and repeated the maneuver.
Turned to the left, and did the same. No sign. Apparently the depths
had remained untouched since the Royal George had been cleared from
the harbor, back about 1840. Returned from my last trip, I turned off
my lantern, to save its current, and stood in the darkness pondering.
I did not want to go backward from the place where I was. Such a step
would put me to leeward of the boat, and the lad had warned me against
such a move, saying that it might be hard for me to make progress
against the tide. There was nothing to be done save to try a further
cast of fortune, so I pushed on twenty paces forward and started to
count twenty more. Just as I was reaching the limit, the lantern gleam
showed a shadow ahead of me. I hurried on till the object came into
the full light. There, peacefully as if sleeping in his quiet bed at
home, lay a midshipman in his blue uniform. He could not have been
fifteen years of age. His golden hair, that a mother might often have
kissed and caressed, swayed with the slight movement of the waters. His
arm lay naturally beneath his head. As I knelt beside this childish
victim of a dread mission, a wave of bitter rebellion passed over me.
I cried out in very intensity of feeling. The sound reverberating
through the helmet to my ears seemed a mighty roar, and, surprised into
realization, I braced myself to my work and looked more closely. There
was something strange about the uniform, something different from that
on the youngsters I had seen about German harbors. I studied the form
before me for a minute before I saw what it was. At last I placed it.
The buttons, the brass buttons were gone. I looked more narrowly.
Not a glint of metal showed. Rising, I passed on, and entered on a
city of the dead beneath the waves. Officer and sailor, steward and
electrician lay in quiet rest. They lay all around me, as if sleeping
on a battlefield, ready for the struggle of the morning. I had paced
many steps before I reached the end. A thousand men lay there. Not
one had even a shadow of surprise, of premonition of death, upon his
brow. All lay as if ready for the reveille, the reveille which would
not sound for them. It seemed no thing of earth. Rather a scene from
some unearthly vision where I, a disembodied spirit, walked among the
forgotten shells of other souls. I wakened with a start, as I came
sharp up against a mass which gave way at my approach. I flashed my
lamp upon it. A heap of crockery, broken and shattered, met my eye.
One plate in ornate gold showed the double eagle and below “Kaiserin
Luisa.” That heap of broken crockery and this city of the dead were all
that remained of as fine a battleship, of as magnificent a result of
human ingenuity and skill, as ever sailed the seas. I must not linger,
though, I had work enough to do, to find all I could of the reasons
for the catastrophe, and give place to Tom before the dawn could come.
Just beside me lay an officer. I could not tell his rank, for all
insignia had disappeared. I stooped to look for metal, when suddenly I
felt myself rising steadily. I was being drawn to the surface, though
I had given no signal. Indignantly I jerked the rope twice again
and again. The men above paid no heed to my commands, and I mounted
steadily upwards.
As I rose the same pains attacked me as when I descended, but the space
through which they endured seemed far shorter. In reality but a brief
interval elapsed before I was clambering up the little ladder, to find
myself in the full glare of a powerful search-light, while the boat
started off at full speed. I had no time to look around till the boy
helped me to loosen the bull’s-eye in the front of my helmet. Then I
surveyed the scene.
The boat was going at her top speed, while Tom ran her straight out
towards the Isle of Wight. The search-light of a warship a mile or more
away was playing constantly on us as we sped along, and I could see a
spot of darkness, probably a launch, leaving her side and starting in
our direction. As I gazed, I breathed in long breaths of fresh air. I
felt as if I had never known how good air, just plain air, was, before.
[Illustration: THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF A WARSHIP WAS PLAYING CONSTANTLY ON
US. [_Page 122._ ]
“Take off Mr. Orrington’s armor, boy,” ordered Tom sharply. “You all
right, Jim?”
“Sure,” I answered. “What are we in for?”
“I don’t know yet,” replied Tom, “but we’ll know pretty soon. We can’t
get away in this old boat. We’ll run as long as we can, though. Luckily
they sent a launch, not a torpedo boat or a destroyer. The battleship
landed us with their searchlight just a few minutes ago, and once they
fixed it on us, I pulled you up. Get anything?”
“Yes,” I replied, and fell back into silence, while the lad valeted me
out of my diving suit. The launch was coming swiftly. It seemed to be
moving two feet to our one.
“It’s going to be a pretty close shave,” I remarked, as I stood beside
Tom, who had given the wheel to the boy.
“Yes, but I’m going to head straight for Ryder, and trust to luck,” he
said. We were well towards the shores of the Isle as the launch came
near enough to hail.
“Stop or we shoot,” came hurtling at us.
“No go,” said Tom resignedly, as he stopped the engine, “and there’s
the shore not five hundred yards away.”
Just as he spoke, the light vanished. The searchlight had gone out;
something must have happened to the current. We could hear the officer
swear vigorously, as the launch came up.
Tom seized my arm. “To the dingy,” he whispered. “Lad, if you keep your
mouth shut, I’ll straighten everything out,” he murmured to the boy, as
we scrambled to the stern.
“Roight, sor,” said the boy briefly, as he sat phlegmatically beside
the engine.
Tumbling into the dingy, I seized the oars and pulled swiftly towards
the shore, as the launch came up on the opposite side. We could hear
the hail as the officer came aboard, and his angry raging “Where are
the other men?”
“Don’t know,” answered the boy.
The officer ran to the stern.
“They have the boat, follow them,” he cried, but just as the launch
turned, we struck the shore, and before the panting sailors could reach
us, were off the beach and sheltered in a deep doorway. We heard their
steps running by, as we stood crouched against the wall, but we dared
not venture out till we had heard them returning after a futile chase.
Once they were by, we started off into the country at a brisk pace.
The morning was well on as we came into Seaview, whence we had planned
to come back to Portsmouth. I had finished my story, and Tom had
meditated on it for an hour, while we strode sturdily on. As we stopped
by a wayside brook to freshen our toilet, he spoke. “No metal?”
“Not a bit,” I answered.
“Dorothy was right,” said Tom. “The man who is trying to stop all war
must have some terrific power which utterly destroys metal, causing it
to change completely into some other form, and instantly disappear. How
horrible to have that man at large. Jim, we’ve got to find him. That
little middy you told me of would fire my purpose ten times over, if it
were not ablaze already. There’s one thing though,--do you suppose the
British government knows what we know?”
“I have very little doubt they do,” I answered, “I fully believe that
somebody had been there before us. Everything points that way; the
closing of all diving operations by the authorities, the chase of our
boat and their persistent effort to capture us.”
“You must be right, Jim,” said Tom soberly. “They wouldn’t want any one
to know any more about conditions than they could help. You can’t tell
what little thing will start the fire of war just now. I guess we’d
better keep this to ourselves for the present.”
“Right you are,” I answered, as we walked into Seaview.
We reached our rooms without the slightest difficulty, and went to bed
after a hearty breakfast. We were awakened about twelve by a knock at
the door, and the call of a familiar voice. It was our friend Thompson,
the manager. He closed the door carefully, as I admitted him. Then he
turned and shook hands with me.
“Mr. Orrington,” he said, “you’re a great man, and a lucky one. J.
Miggs and his boy came to see me this morning.”
“Then they didn’t keep them?” I cried.
“No,” said Thompson laughing. “J. Miggs got out of prison, and his boy
never got there. The lad waked up for once. The launch with all its
crew went chasing you and, by the time they got back, the youngster was
safe at the dock at Portsmouth, and the suits were stored. You’d better
not see either of them though. They may be watched. If you’ll give me
the money, I’ll pay him and it will be all right.”
I paid the money, and we parted.
The moment Thompson closed the door, I rushed into Tom’s room.
“Get up,” I said energetically. “J. Miggs and his boy are both free;
I’ve left the money for them, and it’s time now for us to get out
immediately. This town is none too healthy a location for us, now that
business is out of the way.”
Tom’s loquaciousness had a habit of utterly disappearing, when a new
scientific conception entered his head. As we drove to the station,
he stopped the cab at a bookseller’s, dashed in, and returned with a
package of books and papers. Once settled in the train, “Don’t speak
to me till I get through, if you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ve got
something here I want to work out.” He opened his new package, spread
the books on the seat, and took up a block and his fountain pen. I
scanned the titles of his books casually. “New Insulators for High
Currents,” “Control and Insulation of Radio-active Apparatus,” “Yacht
Construction,” “Theory of Wood Working,” “Caema, What It Has Done for
Electricity,” “Types of Sailing Vessels for the Past Twenty Years.”
“Queer mixture,” I said to myself idly, and then I turned my attention
to the scenery.
Tom was busy with his pocket rule, measuring and laying off diagrams,
for three hours, until the outer edges of London began to appear.
Looking up suddenly, he spoke, “Almost in, aren’t we? Well, I’ll put my
work away, and we’ll discuss our future plans for a few minutes.”
As we rolled into Waterloo station, our discussion ended. “We’ll go
down somewhere on the Channel,” said Tom, “set up the wave-measuring
machine, and see what we can do with that. It’s our best card, and
we’ll work there till Dorothy comes. We’ve got to hang round here till
she arrives, anyway.”
“We certainly have,” said I, and my heart leaped exultantly at the
thought of her coming.